Who's the Real Green?

Last week, City Attorney Tom Carr had a whip-smart answer to angry Initiative 80 supporters who complained that a July 30 court ruling knocking the creeks initiative off the November ballot would prevent citizens from "ever filing an environmental initiative" again. (I-80 would have forced developers to restore creeks on their property; Carr had challenged it in court.)

I-80 enviros claimed that King County Superior Court Judge James Doerty's ruling, which confirmed Carr's legal argument that I-80 ignored the state's Growth Management Act (GMA) guidelines because it sidestepped the public hearing process, would de facto prohibit all land-use initiatives (like 1989's cap on building heights).

That's just Carr's point. Carr, out-Greening the Green I-80 backers themselves, reasons that if people could change land-use regulations by initiative, "just think of what they'd do in the eastern part of this county.... You could have an initiative that increases the growth boundary" of eastern King County cities, or one that removed buffer zones around salmon-bearing streams. Sounds like a pretty convincing (and enviro-friendly) case to us. ERICA C. BARNETT


Compton Office Shakeup

George Allen, a longtime aide to Seattle City Council Member Jim Compton, has left Compton's office--in the middle of the council member's reelection campaign--for a job at the Seattle Monorail Project. Allen, who worked at Metro for several years before joining Compton's staff, will assist in planning the second phase of the monorail. His replacement in Compton's office, Walt Hubbard, was a public-safety advisor to former mayor Paul Schell. ERICA C. BARNETT


He's Baaack

Brian Derdowski, the odd-duck anti-globalization, pro-corporate-accountability green Republican who lost his King County Council seat in 1999 to David Irons (a challenger from his own party), has announced that he will try to recapture his former seat this year. This time, though, he is running as a Democrat. Democratic officials expressed pleasure over Derdowski's shift. "It's great news," King County Democrats chair Greg Rodriguez says. "Many of us thought that he was a Democrat anyway." At least one council Democrat is rumored to be freaked out at the prospect of endorsing the independent-minded--some would say "loose cannon"--candidate. SANDEEP KAUSHIK